Infection per trillion: experts calculated the losses of small businesses due to the pandemic

As the president of the Opora Rossii business association, Alexander Kalinin, told Izvestia, by the end of the outgoing year, the damage caused by the pandemic to small and medium-sized enterprises in the country will amount to at least one trillion rubles. In this case, the main blow will be taken by the services, trade and public catering sectors.

According to the expert, this fall, despite assurances from the authorities about the absence of a second wave of coronavirus, small and medium-sized businesses have already felt its impact: the average check in public catering decreased by 15-20%, and fitness centers found themselves in a "catastrophic situation": few people go to them, because clients are afraid of getting infected.

"If there is a second lockdown, there will be massive closings, and forever", - quotes Prime as saying Kalinin.

According to Opora Rossii experts, small and medium-sized businesses now account for one fifth of the Russian economy.

“If we roughly estimate, small business will go negative by at least 0.9% of GDP - that is, by almost one trillion rubles. However, there is one "but": the sectors most affected by the pandemic - services, trade, catering - are mainly composed of SMEs. So the actual figure will be even higher”, - Alexander Kalinin is convinced.

If before the onset of the first wave, enterprises had deposits in their accounts and stocks of goods in warehouses, but now this is all "eaten away": the safety margin is exhausted.

Now there is a wave of mass closures and bankruptcies of enterprises across the country. Net closings from August last year to August 2020 amounted to 247 thousand: 1.16 million small and medium-sized companies closed in Russia, and only 870 thousand new ones were created. A year earlier, the figure was three times less - 80 thousand.

According to Vedomosti, now Russian businessmen are getting rid of their assets en masse. In recent months, the number of people willing to sell their business has grown by 28%. First of all, entrepreneurs are trying to get rid of hotels, fitness clubs, offices, hookah and hairdressing salons. The most difficult business situation was in Ufa, Samara and Voronezh. There, the number of entrepreneurs willing to sell their business has doubled. Owners in Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod began to put their businesses up for auction one and a half times more often. In Moscow, Chelyabinsk, Volgograd and Novosibirsk, the number of similar ads increased by 28%. The owners consider hotels to be the most toxic asset: the number of offers for their sale in the country increased by 49%. Now, according to experts, the occupancy rate in hotel rooms does not exceed 20%.

Hotels are followed by offices (growth in offers for sale - by 36%), then - objects of the entertainment industry - hookah, nightclubs, galleries, bowling alleys, recreation centers (+ 25%). Dance schools, fitness clubs, swimming pools and gyms are now listed for sale more often by 24%. The offer for the sale of beauty salons, hairdressing salons, massage and manicure salons, as well as private kindergartens and development centers increased by 15%.

In the first nine months of this year, the number of individual entrepreneurs' bankruptcies increased by 65%. This is due to the fact that, in contrast to large companies, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, individual entrepreneurs turned out to be much more difficult to obtain support measures announced by the state. A new wave of bankruptcies in Russia is expected to intensify in early 2021. Opinion polls indicate that panic has gripped many entrepreneurs in anticipation of the second wave of coronavirus. About 60% of respondents are convinced that their business will not “survive” a new lockdown in the event of the reintroduction of restrictive measures in the country.